Sorrow's Way
An ageing substance abuser must confront an estranged friend to begin an important personal journey.
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Ben LawsonDirector
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Ben LawsonWriter
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Chuck FranceProducer
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Ben LawsonProducer
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Laurene LandonKey Cast"Opal"Sky, Nation's Fire, Maniac Cop
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Mickey StoneKey Cast"Rusty"Vincent's Vow, Pushing Envelopes
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Project Type:Short
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Runtime:13 minutes 34 seconds
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Completion Date:February 1, 2021
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Production Budget:5,000 USD
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Country of Origin:United States
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Country of Filming:United States
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Language:English
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Film Color:Color
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First-time Filmmaker:No
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Student Project:No
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Digital Cinema Package:Unavailable
Ben Lawson has been writing and directing short films since 2010. His early shorts garnered numerous nominations and awards in local film festivals and contests, including Best Screenplay and Best Direction.
Ben was raised on a small family farm in rural Southwestern Missouri. It was here in these early years that he nurtured an appreciation and passion for reading, drawing, and creating works with the horror and dark sci-fi themes which defined him as an artist. As a pre-teen inspired by his father’s early 4x5 camera he found in a barn attic, Ben acquired a small film camera and was immediately enraptured with this new medium. Consequentially, he graduated from Missouri State University in 1997 with a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree in Photography.
He took a ten-year artistic hiatus to get married and raised a family of boys, then resumed his artistic journey in photography with his own studio. This creative exploration encouraged Ben’s foray into film — digital camera technology could now capture his art in motion — and he produced a number of short films and music videos, single-handedly writing, directing, shooting and editing the majority of those productions.
Following a divorce in 2014, Ben continued to work in his home town of Springfield, Missouri and moved to Chicago to shoot more shorts and began to work on feature productions. There on a set he was encouraged to make the move to Hollywood and expand his artistic horizons and opportunities.
True to his art and passion, Ben lives in Los Angeles where he showcases his distinctive creative vision both in writing and directing short and feature length projects today.
This short is a proof of concept for a feature-length script of the same name. The feature was written with the lead, Laurene Landon, in mind. My co-producer for the short, Chuck, met Laurene years ago and really wanted to give her the chance to show her chops in a strong, dramatic role. After I met her, I was totally on board. Based on her strong personality and off-beat sense of humor I came up with Opal, a seriously flawed yet sympathetic character who is forced to face her past to re-connect with the daughter she abandoned years ago after loosing the rest of her family to a car accident.
I hope seeing Laurene in this short will inspire interest in producing the feature which Laurene, Chuck, and myself really connect with and adore.